Click Me
by Ibuprofenne
Summary: Apparently, Tifa doesn't know that her crush on Reno isn't obvious... game shows... lesbian coroners... marijuana... ReTi for your pleasure. CURRENTLY ON HOLD
1. Teenage Confrontation

**Author's Note: **Well, I got this idea when one of my friends met someone online. I tried to warn her that he was probably some serial rapist but then he ended up being my neighbor. Funky. Is my neighbor a rapist! I dunno… ANYWAYS, enjoy.

**Disclaimer: **Everything FF-ish belongs to the genius mind of Tetsuya Nomura.

* * *

Reno was a man who had everything he wanted. He lived in a nice apartment with a loft, had a decent sum of money, and a well-paying job. No... actually, the apartment used to be Tseng's, Reno inherited 20,000 gil from his grandmother's will, and worked for Rufus Shinra's personal black operations team, also known as the Turks. 

But the only one thing he didn't have was a girlfriend. The swinger had countless one-night stands, but what he really needed, what he really longed for, was a serious girlfriend.

The girl on the bus with the long blonde braid had a habit of biting sensitive parts. Sophia, the supermodel, spoke a completely different language. The cashier at the café liked shoving things in body orifices. Leah, the girl he 'accidentally-on-purpose' crashed into while she was carrying several physics textbooks had nearly no experience in the sack. Genius as she was being a physicist, she was an idiot in bed.

Reno often wondered why he never had a girl for his own for more than a week. Perhaps because they were either unobtainable if they were sober, or they had some sort of habit that Reno loathed with a passion.

With a pensive look and a hand on his chin, he remembered the first girlfriend he had ever had. Reno was fifteen then, a year before he was drafted. He was living in the slums as the leader of some teenage ruffians out to jump the next rich bastard that walked past the slums. Monica was the daughter of one of those rich bastards, and Reno often saw drive past with her daddy in his convertible.

One night Monica was alone, walking softly in her stylish leather flats. Her outline was clearly visible in the flickering orange glow of the streetlamp, and all Reno could see from where he was standing was her handbag. Full of daddy's credit cards, no doubt.

Reno made his move and tried to snatch her purse. He remembered the pain and humiliation when she punched him in the face and sprayed pepper spray in his eyes. He also remembered after his gang members ditched him how she asked him if he was alright.

She was a beautiful girl with a beautiful soul, but Reno was just a dirty sicko with a dirty mind. Monica dumped him three days later after she saw him with another girl. Reno couldn't sleep on his stomach for five weeks.

A colorful pop-up ad on his laptop brought him back to reality. "**Find your one true love**" it read in large red letters. Bored and slightly intrigued, he moved his cursor around and clicked on the link. The ad brought him to an online dating site, its page stating that he needed to sign up.

Reno wondered if the women described themselves as athletic and successful were actually overweight and piss-broke, using stolen credit cards to access the program.

**Please choose an online name:**

Reno thought for a moment. Hotsexystud. Naah, to egotistical. TurkRed. Egh, too obvious. BlackwindSamurai. Mmmrgghh... too feudal and bluntly inflammatory to the source of a passionate hate beheld by the author. Electro-MagWarrior927. No. Reno sighed and leant back in his chair. It was the first step and he was already out of ideas. He had to choose something out of character so he wouldn't be identified…

That's when it hit him. Red-Hot! Like his favorite candies! Reno felt like a genius. He typed that in and scrolled down the page.

**Please choose a password:**

He used his social security number.

**I am a(man/woman) looking for a (man/woman).**

I'm a man looking for a woman. Yes… a woman with nice legs and who knows how to have a fun time…

**I was born on:**

September… ninth… twenty-six years ago…

He typed in his e-mail address, his interests, his dislikes, and his social status. Uploading pictures was optional, but he took a picture of his shirtless chest, just to tease the matched users of what they were getting into.

Three hours later, when Reno was on his bed eating some instant noodles out of a Styrofoam cup, a small ringing noise was heard from his computer. Upon throwing out his ramen cup and checking out his programs, he had received three matches: ShakenNotStirred, Au Courant, and NaughtyxVixen.

Reno was immediately attracted to the name 'NaughtyxVixen', and clicked on her profile. She looked nice, but it was quite obvious she was a slut. God, Reno loved sluts. He just never went past a day with them.

Apparently, she was online and he decided to talk to her.

**Red-Hot**: So, what're you into?  
**NaughtyxVixen**: Ain't it obvious? ;D  
**Red-Hot**: So you like to get it on.  
**NaughtyxVixen**: Yeah.  
**Red-Hot**: What's the weirdest place you've ever had sex in?  
**Red-Hot**: I mean, in public places.  
**NaughtyxVixen**: Um… in a school bus  
**Red-Hot**: How old are you!  
**NaughtyxVixen**: 18.  
**Red-Hot**: Dear lord…

So Reno left this 'NaughtyxVixen' because he wasn't into teenagers. This is what he meant about the users being someone they weren't… Reno could've been talking to a man for God's sakes…


	2. Long Live Sobriety

**Author's Note**: I've just been caught up in a lot of things. My friend broke his leg, I'm cutting classes and detentions, and I'm losing weight faster than Nicole Ritchie back in the day.

**Disclaimer**: Everything FFVII-centric belongs to Tetsuya Nomura.

* * *

Apparently, after he eliminated "NaughtyxVixen" from his match list, he learned that "Au Courant" was a woman six feet tall and was a left-wing democrat who didn't shave to show her radical side. Reno could tell that her picture was PhotoShopped. Looked too… pixilated in some areas, to say the least. Reno thought that she was a giantess wearing a skirt that exposed her gorilla legs to the public, so they would somehow make them become democrats… Reno needed to organize his imagination.

But before he could get to see the profile of "ShakenNotStirred", there were five new melodic sounds, signaling that he had five more matches. A picture of some well-defined pectorals sure brought in women by the bucketful…

Reno ditched the computer after a while because his eyes began to water, and took a nice long nap. It was a Saturday, and should be spent in the best way possible- either sleeping, drinking, or screwing.

Well, with the absence of a person, there was no fun in drinking with yourself. Only anti-social trolls and women like Au Courant who didn't shave to show her radical, left-wing side drank alone. Au Courant was probably drinking alone right now. Reno could just imaging her, hairy gorilla legs and French armpits and all, sitting on a balcony overlooking Costa del Sol with a nice beer in hand, emphysema and formaldehyde rolled up in a small bundle in the other.

Speaking of which…

Where was his nicotine salvation in times of need?

* * *

After a few shots of nice tequila and some drags on his cigarette, he got comfortable in the black vinyl barstool. The clink! of an empty glass was a signal for Tifa to get another. "So I was bored one day, right?" Reno began speaking, perhaps in monologue. "And I sign up for this online dating," he took a gulp, "thing. Couldn't think of a name so I picked my favorite candies…"

Tifa froze, dark hair swaying over her face as she did so. Luckily, Reno didn't notice because a new customer ordered a scotch on ice.

* * *

"Reno, Reno wake up," Tifa tried nudging the pathetic drunk redhead off the barstool. "It's closing time."

He looked at her through one eye, the bright blue Mako inside faded a bit. It reminded her of aquamarine earrings she used to own. "Mmmrrrghhh… Teeeeeefffaaaa, the nursing home is two miles awaaayy."

Yes, Reno was drunk. No doubt about that.

"Officher? I'm not driving under ze influence."

Tifa slung one of his arms over her shoulder and half-carried, half-dragged him to the door. "Reno… come on, what's your address?" She planned to get a taxi to dump him off at his place.

Reno probably took Tifa as a ruffian, and told her to shove it. She gave him a swift punch to the face and he sobered up a bit.

* * *

**Red-Hot:** I got my ass handed to me by a girl Saturday night.  
**ShakenNotStirred: **Oh, really? I bet she was really ugly and buff.  
**Red-Hot: **Naah, she's really hot. And top-heavy. Damn, she's really hot, when I think about it.  
**Red-Hot: **No offense to you and all but you didn't put up a picture so I don't know what to say.  
**ShakenNotStirred: **You'll see me soon enough, Reno.  
**ShakenNotStirred has signed off.  
****Red-Hot: **How do you know my name?  
**The following message: **How do you know my name? **Could not be sent to all recipients.**


	3. Presumptuously Speaking

**Author's Note: **I think sometimes that I have waaaaay too much time on my hands. Too much. I should get on with my school work…  
**Disclaimer: **Everything that revolves around Final Fantasy belongs to Tetsuya Nomura, and his evil alter-ego, Liz.

* * *

Reno had a lot of free time at work nowadays, because Rufus went on an extended vacation with Tseng as his bodyguard. Rufus would have no one else. Reno thought Rufus was secretly gay and was whisking Tseng off to paradise in the world of homosexuality. 

The redhead would walk around the halls, check his matches online, grab the ass of a pretty secretary and run, and add rubber bands to a rubber band ball the size of a chocobo egg. Damn, that thing was big.

But our favorite alcoholic was running out of ideas to keep himself occupied. So in one of his wandering journeys, he wandered to the basement of basements; where Hojo kept his experiments. It was a cold, dark place laced with the sickly sweet scent of death.

He scanned his ID card to gain access. Being a Turk rocked sometimes.

With a small sound of the door unlocking, Reno pushed the door open slowly and shut it behind him, listening to it lock. To his left was a long hallway… and the same was at his right. When Reno was younger, he'd have nightmares of never-ending hallways. Here it was.

The fluorescent light flickered every minute or so, and it bothered Reno a lot while he walked down the corridor; the one to his left. He whipped out a pair of sunglasses he stole from Rude, and put them on. He felt stupid, for some reason.

His footsteps were starting to drag, something that Reno tried to fix over the years. The steady hum of the generators nearby mixed with the water dripping and his footsteps made quite the odd orchestra.

_**OHH… WE'RE HALFWAY THERE… OOHHHH! WE'RE LIVIN' ON A PRAYER… TAKE MY HAN-**_

Reno quickly scanned his ID on the side of one of the doorframes and swung the door open. There was a (really attractive) woman in a white lab coat, singing her lungs out while doing some lab work. At the sight of Reno at the door, she shut her music off.

"Can I ask what you're doing here?" She asked, a pipette in hand, halfway full of a clear liquid she was going to pour into a small vial. The centrifuge cover was open.

Reno pointed one thumb behind him. "Should I be going?"

"No, you can stay if you want." Her tone mellowed a bit. "You're the rogue Turk, aren't you?"

He was the bad guy now? Reno felt a bit proud. "Yeah. Yeah, that's me. Reno."

"Dr. Paige Mercutio. I work the dayshift."

"So what do you do here?" Reno looked around the room at various little bottles on a rack.

"A bit of everything." She placed the full vial in the centrifuge and shut its lid. Paige turned the speed up to high. "Oh," She remembered, "I have to perform an autopsy. Want to come with me? It's kinda boring when you cut open a dead body by yourself."

He was a bit excited and a bit nauseous at the idea of it, but put on a lab coat and some latex gloves and followed Paige to another room across the hall. A body-shaped lump was on the metal dissecting table.

"Who is this guy?" He asked when she began to take a liver temperature.

She stopped for a bit and looked at his face. "He was the Director of Sales. Co-workers said he just slumped over in the middle of a meeting."

"We have sales?

"…you're a Turk and you don't know that? Pity."

"What do we sell?"

"Hah. We sell a lot of things. Of those things, we also sell drugs."

"As in the type you get high off of?"

"No, more like prescription. Like anti-convulsants and anti-histamines." Paige wrote down his LT. "Seventy-two… the dude's been dead for about ten hours."

**

* * *

Red-Hot: **Guess what I did today!  
**ShakenNotStirred: **Get your ass whipped by a girl.  
**Red-Hot: **Naah, I saw a coroner cut up a dead guy.  
**ShakenNotStirred: **Oh, EW.  
**ShakenNotStirred**: So you work in the medical field.  
**Red-Hot**: Naaaaaah, I work in government. Well, sorta.  
**ShakenNotStirred**: …  
**Red-Hot**: What, did you break the law and you're afraid that I'm gonna come after you now?  
**ShakenNotStirred**: You can say that.  
**Red-Hot**: You afraid that I'm going to handcuff you and pat you down for any weapons?  
**ShakenNotStirred**: …  
**Red-Hot**: Oh baby, I'm on a roll now.  
**Red-Hot**: And then I'm going to blindfold you and have my way?  
**ShakenNotStirred**: ..;;  
**Red-Hot**: What, do you want me to stop?  
**ShakenNotStirred**: Yeah. Perhaps too many tequilas have gotten in the way of your common sense.  
**Red-Hot**: How do you know I was having tequilas before?  
**ShakenNotStirred**: I know a lot of things.  
**Red-Hot**: Are you stalking me? ARE YOU? HUH?  
**ShakenNotStirred**: If I was stalking you, would I need some cheesy instant messaging program to contact you?  
**Red-Hot**: …right. 


	4. The Mindless Factotum

**Author's Note: **I got food poisoning from bad sashimi! AAAAGH! I've lost more weight than before and I think I'm anorexic now.  
**Disclaimer: **Not. Mine.

* * *

**Red-Hot: **There's this really, really hot girl I know.  
**Naproxenne**: Do I know her?  
**Red-Hot: **Well, you probably heard of her.  
**Red-Hot**: But then you've probably seen her, and when you do realize who she is, you're gonna think she's hot.  
**Naproxenne**: Reno, you're kind of stupid.  
**Red-Hot**: Why?  
**Naproxenne**: I'm a lesbian, I'm half-naked in front of the computer, haven't had sex in nine months, and desperate for a girlfriend.  
**Red-Hot**: Paige… omfg I hate it when you do the lesbian thing on me.  
**Red-Hot**: It turns me on so much.  
**Naproxenne**: Men are such pigs. Especially Turks.  
**Red-Hot**: Wait, I'm the only Turk you know!  
**Naproxenne**: Why don't you go ask Tseng why I'm a lesbian now?

**Red-Hot**: Hey dudemeister, what happened to Paige?  
**Taciturk**: MERCUTIO?  
**Taciturk**: HOW THE HELL OD YOU KNOW HER?  
**Taciturk**: do  
**Red-Hot**: Well, we met yesterday.  
**Taciturk**: DOING…?  
**Red-Hot**: Well, I found her singing in the basement.  
**Taciturk**: Let me guess, it was Bon Jovi, right?  
**Red-Hot**: Yeah.  
**Taciturk**: I hate that guy.  
**Red-Hot**: What happened with Paige?  
**Taciturk**: I'm not telling.  
**Red-Hot**: TSENNNNNGGG TTELLLL MEEEEEEE  
**Taciturk**: Only if you promise not to tell anyone.  
**Red-Hot**: Fine.  
**Taciturk**: Turk's honor.  
**Red-Hot**: Yeah, yeah.  
**Taciturk**: Uh… how do you say this…  
**Red-Hot**: HURRY UP IM GONNA PISS IN MY PANTS HURRY UP  
**Taciturk**: I'm…  
**Red-Hot**: YOURE WHAT? WHAT IS IT, TSENG?  
**Taciturk**: I'm bad in bed.  
**Red-Hot**: AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA  
**Taciturk**: 1 in 10 men have E.D.!  
**Red-Hot**: YOU HAVE ED? AHAHAHAHHAHAHAH!111111!11111  
**Red-Hot**: OMFG HAHAHAH!11!1!  
**Taciturk**: And I kept saying that I wasn't in the mood.  
**Taciturk**: Or I used Cialis.  
**Red-Hot**: OMG HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA I FEEL BAD FOR YOU ROFLS LOLOLOLOLOLOL!11!1!  
**Taciturk** **is unavailable because Taciturk is offline. **

**Red-Hot**: As much as I don't wanna talk to ya, I have some news on your little loverboy Tseng.  
**313N4**: Uhm, wat?  
**Red-Hot**: Tseng has ED.  
**313N4**: Wats ed?  
**Red-Hot**: Oh God, you haven't fucked him yet.  
**313N4**: he has an std? omg omg omg omg omg omg  
**Red-Hot**: No, you idiot, he has an erectile dysfunction.  
**313N4**: He cant get it up? U serious?  
**Red-Hot**: That's what made one of his ex-girlfriend go lezzie.  
**313N4**: Wow. Imma go bang rude now.  
**Red-Hot**: YOU'RE BOINKING RUDE?  
**313N4**: Juss playin with ya, homie.  
**Red-Hot**: Oh good. Since when were you all 'ghetto-fab'?  
**313N4**: My sister calls it a phase.

**Red-Hot**: So what do you think Tseng's doing on his little private job with the big man?  
**Naproxenne**: Well, probably giving him a blowjob and getting promoted to something.  
**Red-Hot**: I think Tseng's been giving blowjobs because he's at the top of his… thingie.  
**Naproxenne**: I can so see Tseng as a gay man, having butt sex, fun with lube and all those weird things.  
**Red-Hot**: I think I just threw up in my mouth.

**Red-Hot**: TSENG HAS ERECTILE DYSFUNCTIONS PASS IT ON TO WHOEVER WORKS IN THE SHINRA BUILDING!  
**Ritalinne**: Do I know you?

**Red-Hot**: TSENG HAS ERECTILE DYSFUNCTIONS PASS IT ON TO WHOEVER WORKS IN THE SHINRA BUILDING!  
**EnDurance**: Hey, I dated Tseng once.  
**Red-Hot**: Really? Was he really bad in the sack?  
**EnDurance**: He. Was. Pathetic.

**Red-Hot**: TSENG HAS ERECTILE DYSFUNCTIONS PASS IT ON TO WHOEVER WORKS IN THE SHINRA BUILDING!  
**KINGSEPH**: …  
**Red-Hot**: Is this Sephiroth?  
**KINGSEPH**: No, this is the little voice in your head that keeps repeating, "Kill yourself… do it now…"  
**Red-Hot**: And I thought Sephiroth died.

**Red-Hot**: TSENG HAS ERECTILE DYSFUNCTIONS PASS IT ON TO WHOEVER WORKS IN THE SHINRA BUILDING!  
**Ibuprofenne**: If you can tell me what radioactive isotopes are, I'll pass it on.  
**Red-Hot**: Hey, do all lab techs have screen names dealing with pills?  
**Ibuprofenne**: You don't think so…

**Red-Hot**: TSENG HAS ERECTILE DYSFUNCTIONS PASS IT ON TO WHOEVER WORKS IN THE SHINRA BUILDING!  
**Taciturk**: You sent one to me, you dumbass?


	5. Of Telephone Cords and Daiquiri

**Author's Note: **We're gonna sip Bacardi like it's your birthday… arrrgh I have someone's 18th birthday party to go to but I'm sick with food poisoning. Damn. I mean, SHE'S TURNING 18! THAT'S LIKE, LEGAL!  
**Disclaimer**: Netsuya Tomura owns everyyyshing, offishuer… (hiccup) I'm not… (hic) driting wrunk…

* * *

"Hey Teef," Reno raised his hand and waved her over. "Hit me with another one." His hand dropped back to the mahogany bar counter.

Tifa looked at the pitiful sight of the redhead Turk for a moment. He was such a fool at times. She sighed and poured him a tequila, slipping a paper coaster under it because the bar was recently renovated and didn't want any mars on the counter of her beautiful bar.

He took it between two fingers, and downed it in one shot. The empty glass slipped from his fingers and crashed onto the floor. The bar had about seven people in it, and all looked up for a fleeting moment, and went back to their business when they realized it was the friendly neighborhood drunk that just broke a shot cup.

Reno reached down drunkenly from his black vinyl barstool to clean up the mess, and his face teetered dangerously from the glass shards. Tifa saw this and pulled Reno back up before he ended up kissing the floor and getting some pieces stuck between his lips.

His head leaned on her shoulder, lolling to the side. She felt his breathing on her bare skin and had an idea. A very ingenious idea, to say the least… Tifa signaled to the other barista to take over for a minute.

The former AVALANCHE member dragged Reno to the back of the bar, where they kept extra boxes of supplies. She tied him to a chair with telephone cords, and as the drunken Reno tried to decipher what was happening, Tifa had a nice laugh.

All she needed to do now was to wait…

* * *

The single, bare light bulb that swung slowly from the ceiling cast a sharp, glaring light all over the room, accentuating the cement walls and floor. It sizzled every nine minutes or so.

Reno snapped out of his inebriated state to think that he was kidnapped by an army of gay terrorists led by Tseng and Rufus. Reno was particularly terrified that they would do something when he "dropped the soap".

Oh, how his butt would hurt.

He looked around and licked his lips, something he would do to concentrate. Hey, he never had a strawberry daiquiri… why the hell did his lips taste like it? The daiquiri-like taste on his lips had a plastic aftertaste, and that meant only one thing:

The gay army of terrorists put makeup on him!

* * *

"Don't you look absolutely adorable?" Tifa smiled and tried to apply mascara to his lashes, but he struggled too much for her to put it on without smudging it all over his face.

He growled and snapped at her, very much like a scared, vicious puppy would do when you touch his favorite toy. "Tifa," He said between clenched teeth, "Get me out of this, or I'll…"

"Or you'll what, oh Mr. High-And-Mighty Turk? Come after me with your Turk buddies? Arrest me? Shove me against a wall and pin my hands over my head and pat me down? Tell me the speech that goes like, 'You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can or will be used against you in a court of law. If you cannot afford a lawyer the city of Midgar will…'"

Reno sat dumbly in his chair and tried to figure out why this sounded so familiar to him. As she rambled on, something in Reno's non-existent brain clicked, and he nearly stood up and exclaimed, "AHA!", but his feet were also tied to the chair.

"Tifa!" he shouted, bringing her out of her little reverie.

She whipped around and looked at him. "What!"

"Do you like your martinis shaken, not stirred?"


	6. Drawing Blanks on The Dating Board

**Author's Note**: HAH! Writing short chapters with cliffhangers totally make my day. It's a Sunday morning and I'm waiting for the bus and since it's a goddamn Sunday, I have to wait about an hour for it to come. Instead of freezing my non-Asian ass outside in the melting snow, I'd rather come in and write. Yes… writing is… good….

* * *

**ShakenNotStirred**: JESUS CHRIST RENO, I DO NOT HAVE A CRUSH ON YOU!  
**Red-Hot**: Then tying me up in the storage room with telephone cords isn't an act of love?  
**ShakenNotStirred**: No, I needed some entertainment for the night.  
**Red-Hot**: Tifa, if you wanted some entertainment, could've asked.  
**Red-Hot**: Right? Hehe.  
**ShakenNotStirred**: I'm going to go take a shower. brb

* * *

**SansFollicle**: So it was Tifa?  
**Red-Hot**: Yeah. It was Tifa.  
**Red-Hot**: Hey, didn't you once say you had a crush on her?  
**SansFollicle**: That was a long time ago.  
**Red-Hot**: Well, I'm going to ask her out later, so…you know.  
**SansFollicle**: You're going to ask her out? I doubt she wants to go out with a guy like you.  
**Red-Hot**: What's that supposed to mean!  
**SansFollicle**: Didn't you ever think that dumbass blonde kid was going to be in the picture?  
**Red-Hot**: Chocobo head? 


	7. No 17: The SpreadEagle

**Author's Note:** Good morning sunshine, the earth says hello! I miss writing on but this son of a gun DSL isn't letting me online... Errrrk... Oh, and the quote about the skin screaming is copyrighted by my boyfriend :D Hehe... we have naughty conversations.

* * *

"You want to love me… you want to huuug me, you want to smooch me," Reno half-serenaded, half-taunted over Tifa's homemade spaghetti. He grinned like a madman and watched her stab her pile of noodles violently, the tomato sauce squirting out and landing with a plop! on the table.

Tifa had invited him over for dinner as a form of apology for the… telephone cord incident. Reno knew otherwise. He watched her with great pleasure, and played with her mind and threw sexually suggestive comments her way every minute or so.

Now he thought she was like putty in his hands… a very attractive, hot piece of putty that made drinks and kicked ass.

She quickly wiped away the sauce with a crisp white paper napkin. She crumpled it in her hand and looked for the wastebasket. "Reno," She said, turning around with the paper napkin still in her fist. "I'm just a very considerate person, and I haven't had anyone over for quite a long time. It gets lonely, you know?"

A myriad of naughty thoughts flew around in his head like a Pornado (Porn plus tornado equals a whole lot of online pornography on your e-mail) when Tifa said she was lonely. He mentally smacked himself and repeated the word "PRUDE" as many times as he could in his head but alas, it was a futile attempt.

"Doesn't your skin scream my name? Doesn't it long for my attenti—

Tifa threw the napkin in her fist at his head. Reno didn't even flinch and kept drawling on. The helpless napkin bounced off his head and hit the floor with a soundless crash.

"-on? Don't you just want to get me all riled up, wet, and oiled down—"

* * *

"Gunther, wake up. I think I heard a crash from next door."

"Go back to sleep Regina. It's probably that crazy local drunk doing weird things."

"Since when did the Turk move in next door?"

"He's seeing the Lockheart girl."

"Oh…"

"Mmm… go to sleep."

"Gunther, when was the last time we had sex?"

"For Christ's sake, Regina! I'm getting to old for this!"

"66 isn't that old, Gunther!"


	8. Acquiesced Emotions

**Author's Note**: Nothing much to say but to leave constructive criticism and flames if you must. I'm having problems with people in school because apparently, I don't fall into their little ideal mold for a person, and so for those people, and you know who you are, even though you probably might not be reading this, FUCK YOU. Ah, that feels good. Oh, and I'm not just talking about wonderful cybersex with my boyfriend. Oh, and my therapist wonders if she should prescribe medicine for my… mood swings. Very… irregular mood swings. Actually, I'm not having a very good week. My mom is sick, I'm failing school again, and I'm piss broke.

* * *

"Oh shit… what am I going to do…?" Tifa panicked as she surveyed the scene before her. There was broken glass everywhere, chair legs scattered in different directions. Reno's blood, mixed with tomato sauce, stained the carpet a deep crimson red.

Oh yes, Reno. Our Turk had his ass handed to him by a large pile of PMS hormones. He lay on the carpet with soil smudged on his face, leaves in his hair, and glass shard embedded in his alabaster skin. His jacket was torn to shreds, his shirt handing loosely off his chest, and his pants dusty with Tifa's bootprint on his groin.

Tifa was fine, however. There was no scratch on her, and she realized Reno let her do this to him. She just tried to prove to him that she didn't like him…

She wondered if he would wake up in the middle of this action. Tifa stripped him of all his clothes, and placed him as gently as she could in her bathtub, and filled it with warm water. The blood swirled around for a bit, then creating a light pink shade.

Apparently, he had red hair _everywhere_.


	9. Do you know the Muffin Man?

**Author's Note**: A good friend died in a car crash on her way to Buffalo, NY for a swim meet for the YMCA. Her name was April Lao, and we went to Junior High together. It's pretty shocking and depressing; how one's life can be cut short by the driver of the car. April was a popular girl, charismatic, pretty, athletic, and smart. She goes to Stuyvesant for God's sake... while I'm stuck in Bronx Science… Well, April, you were one awesome girl and we all knew that… you rocked everyone's socks and we all knew that… rest in peace and God bless… we all love you and miss you.

**Disclaimer**: Final Fantasy does not belong to me in any way… all I own at the moment are the clothes I'm wearing and a blender with all the ingredients to a daiquiri in it: limejuice, sugar, and rum…

**Welcome, ShakenNotStirred! You have 5 unread messages! **

The garish yellow notification on her computer screen hurt her eyes a bit, and made her blink once, twice, three times to get her contact lenses back into place. The deep breaths of the man sleeping on her bed behind her in his birthday suit became rhythmic, and Tifa knew for sure that she didn't do that much damage to him. She might've cracked some of his ribs and given him a fractured jaw, but that was healable and forgivable.

Right?

She swirled around on her computer chair to take a good look at Reno. He was covered by her green cotton blanket, but the blanket didn't hide much, since blankets have no modesty to begin with. Reno's sinewy biceps and his well-defined pectorals were so…

Tifa smacked herself mentally with a bedpan. A metal one. With what belongs in bedpans in it. Reno was Reno; for God's sake… she fought against him! He was a goddamn Turk! And he was so goddamn sexy, but that's a different story!

She smacked her forehead with her right palm, and dragged her hand down her face. She hated how her ideas digressed.

The glowing computer screen dimly lit up the room, bathing Reno in a fluorescent blue glow, creating an immaculate, ethereal…

Tifa snapped out of her thoughts and went back to her webpage.

**You have 5 unread messages!**

**TO**: ShakenNotStirred  
**CC**: CranberryMuffinMan  
**Subject**: Hello there, lovely.

_Hi, I'm an unmarried single man born in Wutai that now lives in Costa del Sol. I have blonde hair, green eyes, and a built physique. I'm looking for someone who likes long walks on the beach, Chocobo racing, and pastries. If you were wondering about the name, I work for a coffee shop that sells muffins. I like muffins. I also like to party. And Thousand Island salad dressing. And silk pillows. And tight nylon shirts. And Whoopi Goldberg. Oh, and I think if I was reincarnated, I'm going to be a llama. Isn't that cool?_

Tifa had an open-mouthed gaze, and some saliva formed at the corner of her lips and in a few moments, plopped down onto the 'M' key on her keyboard. She closed her mouth and wiped away the saliva with her pinky finger.

**TO**: ShakenNotStirred  
**CC**: BonoHasMono  
**Subject**: Hi.

_I'm a bassist at the B6 Club, and if you've seen me or not, whether you think I'm attractive or not, I deserve a chance, no? You probably get about a million guys begging you to go on dates, but just hear me out. If I had to go on a date with you, I'd take you to the roof of my apartment, because you can see all the stars from there and I furnished the roof with lights and some furniture. I like to play the guitar up there, because the sound carries over rooftops. So if you like rooftop dinners and the idea of me serenading you afterwards, you know who to e-mail. _

Tifa didn't like musicians. They were too artsy-fartsy and usually had goatees and wore berets. B6 was a drag queen hotspot that played ABBA a little too much, and she had no intention of dating someone who worked with drag queens everyday.

**TO**: ShakenNotStirred  
**CC**: CranberryMuffinMan  
**Subject**: Beautiful Martini Woman.

_Darling, you haven't responded! Is it because what I said? Do you not like muffins? Tell me, please!_

Tifa groaned when she saw the rest of her messages were from this muffin fanatic.

Reno mumbled nonsense words in his sleep and shifted in his sleep, turning over to his left side. She turned off her computer and sat on the queen-sized mattress beside him, stroking his fire-red hair and smoothening out all the frizzes.

The room was unlit, and the warm orange glow of the streetlamps shone through her window. Reno was a magnificent creature, but marred by scars and scratches. His lily-white skin was warm to the touch of her hand, and she ran her fingers down the side of his face lovingly.

It was a spur of the moment. She leaned down and gave him a lingering peck on his forehead. Blushing slightly for some reason, she hastily undressed and redressed into her pajamas to go sleep on the couch downstairs.

Reno opened one eye after he was sure she was gone and smirked. She did like him. Although he feigned hurt when she bathed him, he could tell there was genuine concern in her actions.

Oh, this game was fun.


	10. Orange Juice Hemorrhage

**Author's Note: **According to a certain anonymous reader, I write horribly and I rant about my problems that he/she does not want to hear about. Well, you know what? You try living with a psychotic alcoholic of a mother that makes the Osbournes look Amish. So there you go, Miss/Mister. Plus, I'm stating a reason why I can't post as much. And if you don't think I write well and I should stop, why the hell did you read all those chapters up to that one?

**Disclaimer: **Final Fantasy and all things related to it belong to Tetsuya Nomura.

* * *

The coolness of the silk sheets began to get warm from Reno's body temperature, and he shifted from his usual fetal position to find a cool spot on the queen-sized mattress. The inviting raw temperature felt good for only a moment, but then it would be replaced by an uncomfortable hot sensation. His hair was also untied and kept his neck irritably toasty. 

Even though it was quite late in the night, Reno was wide awake, despite the fact that he was used as a punching bag a few hours before. Perhaps like the sweet Hyacinth-like scent on Tifa's pillowcases was acted like caffeine to him. The room was lit by the glow of the streetlamp outside, and it shone from a window high up on a wall.

He sat up in bed, dark sheets covering his body from the navel and below, and turned on the rather squarish lamp on her bedside table. Then he screamed.

Rather girlishly.

* * *

We ask for many things in the world. We might unknowingly ask for a second helping of cheesecake that had unknowingly curdled. We might want the Hotel to supply you with vanilla-scented bubble bath, and not lavender. We might ask for a hot pack when you have cramps. We might ask for mittens for when your hands get cold. We might ask for all the soldiers in the world to lay down their weapons and join us in a rousing chorus of "Cry Me a River", if that happens to be your favorite song. We might even ask for peppermint gun for when you have halitosis in a romantic situation. 

We may ask for them, but will our requests be answered? Not always.

* * *

"Tseng, what's the problem? You're not in the mood again?"  
"It's not that, Elena…"  
"Then what is it?"  
"It's… nothing."  
"Are you sleeping with someone else?"  
"No, I'm—OW! DON'T BITE ME DOWN THERE, DAMNIT."

* * *

Tifa wiped the sleep from her eyes with her fingertips and walked to the bathroom in her pink slippers. The air was nippy, since the heating wasn't turned on in the mornings. 

When she was done washing up, she went to the kitchen, still in her pajamas and slippers, to make some breakfast for Reno. Reno. She didn't hear anything during the night… was he dead? Was he suffering from something… like a hemorrhage… or even…

Tifa quickly buttered a piece of bread and rammed it in the toaster. She poured a cup of orange juice in a cup and pulled out the unfinished toast and threw it on a plate, and ran up the stairs as quickly as she could without spilling anything.

When she kicked the door open, she saw Reno, with bags under his eyes, curled nakedly around a bedpost, looking wary and afraid something on the bed he was staring blankly at.

"That thing…" he shakily pointed his finger at the corner of her bed, "attacked me!"

The brunette followed his finger and saw that it pointed to her Siamese cat, a little kitten that went by the name of "Iris".

She giggled. Snorted, almost. Setting the food down on her computer table, she gingerly picked up Iris, who was glaring at Reno with bright blue eyes that rivaled his, and walked to the doorway. "Glad to see that you're doing well." Tifa said sarcastically, as Iris batted at Tifa's earring.

Reno stuck his tongue out at her as she left, and crawled out of her bed and plopped down on her chair, in all his bare glory, and began eating the slice of toast.

* * *

"Rude."  
"Hi, this is Tifa."  
"Tifa?"  
"Yeah. Can you do me a favor?"  
"…"  
"Reno had an _accident._ Can you come by my place and drop off some clothes for him?"  
"…"  
"Preferably including his boxers."  
"…"  
"Hello?"  
"Did he use a condom? Are you on the pill?"  
"..." 


	11. Mary Jane meets Turk

**Author's Note**: I'm in an oddly happy mood; euphoria induced my menstrual hormones, a remix of an Elvis classic, superior dance skills, and large amounts of black nail polish. Anyways, I'm a bit relived I got my period because for a week or so, I was spazzing because I thought I was pregnant. My period came a week late, and yes, I am sexually active, so hey, what the heck, there's always the chance I've got a bun in the oven! (Nervous laugh) Right. So. Ahem. (I'm pro-choice, by the way. Watch enough episodes of Law & Order: SVU and it'll make even the pro-life people at the Sunflower Project that finds surrogate mothers for abandoned eggs think so.)

**Disclaimer: **Nope, still not mine. "Drop it like it's hot" belongs to the izzle dizzle the shizzle Mister Snoop Doggizzle and izzle shouldizze stopizzle thizzle shizzle.

* * *

_SNOOOOOOOO-P!_

Reno, after receiving his clothing from a very curious bald man with sunglasses at Tifa's door, stopped at a very shady alley in town and bought something from a very smelly man with two or three flies buzzing around his greasy hair.

_Drop it like it's hooooooot, drop it like it's hoooooot…_

Sitting next to Tifa on wooden floor of her hallway, he took a slip of paper and licked the end of it slightly. Tifa watched on in interest.

"This is how you roll a blunt." He explained, running his finger over the finished end-product. It was the prettiest and neatest one he had ever made, and gave it to Tifa.

She took it gingerly with two fingers and stared at it for a long, hard ten seconds before she asked, "How do you feel after this again?"

The redhead smiled and put his knees up, body weight balancing on his tailbone and his wrists propped up on his patella. The author wants you to know that's your kneecap, and she learned it in her freshman biology class quite some time ago.

"Well, babe, it's like… you're Superman and you're flying with clouds between your legs." He replied, and immediately got an awkward image in his head, of Cloud Strife between his legs as the Turk flew in the sky in a tight costume.

He could tell Tifa got the same image by the look on her face.

"Err… I mean, it's like you're never gonna come back down."

She smiled, and put the blunt in her mouth. Reno flipped out his Zippo (which Rude so kindly remembered to take off of Reno's desk and put in his pocket) from his pants pocket and lit the end, as Tifa held her hair back from being burnt.

The first drag she took felt like her lungs were on fire, and she coughed once, feeling tears well up at the corner of her eyes.

_And I roll the best weed cause I got it going on…_

Runoff pot and ripped paper littered the narrow hallway that was lit by triangular lamps giving off purple haze. Tifa's cat was shaved to have a Mohawk down its back. Tifa herself was practically on top of Reno, straddling his lap with both her knees on the side of his hips, his legs spread out in front, blood restricted from flowing to them by Tifa's weight.

"Hey, I've never tired this…" Reno took the half-smoked blunt out of the edge of his thin lips and shoved it up his nostril. Left or right; the author can't remember which. With that, he clogged up the other nostril and took a deep sniff, and resulted in coughing and hacking up smoke. Tifa looked at him in a hazed concern, but then got a goofy smile on and Reno did too.

Tifa disgustingly took the joint out of his nose and smoked the rest of it, and butted it out on her floor. She then laid her head on Reno's chiseled chest, eyes half-shut and smile still on. "Reno," She mumbled as she heard him roll another one on top of her, "You know what?"

"Mmm?" He muttered, the roll already in his mouth.

She smiled doofily and gave him a tight hug that resulted in a sweet marijuana kiss later, and that led to a removal of clothes, and that led to trains going in tunnels and birds flying with bees.

* * *

"You smell that, Elena?"  
"Wait, is that pot?"  
"Should we make a bust?"  
"Or maybe we should just stand by the door and shove out noses in the crack of the door and sniff, and listen to the people have hot sex nearby?"  
"Do you have a condom on you right now?"  
"Getting a boner for once?" 


	12. Dawn Of Realization

**Author's Note**: I feel like a lech. Heh. I'm on DeviantART now! Username's 'lizbianish'.  
**Disclaimer**: FF. Not. Mine.

* * *

Lips crushed against each other, tongues doing an awkward courting dance of the century. His hands were already on the zipper of her black leather vest, pulling it down. Clumsy fingers were nimbly unbuckling his belt, taking time to feel the hard bulge in his pants.

He slowly and gently set her down on her back, her hair brushing away the spilled herbs to the side. The cat watched from the corner, its eyes watering from the smoke the two had so eagerly consumed moments before.

Breasts molded into the hard planes of his chest, the chest that heaved up and down as he breathed with difficulty. She could feel nothing but desire, the strong emotion overcoming everything she thought about this man.

* * *

"I do get boners from time to time."  
"Yeah, but they don't stay up, right?"  
"Elena, one more word about my penis and you're going to be discharged."  
"Haha, discharged. You have a funny word selection."  
"Elena, shut up."  
"Make me, oh Manly Man."

* * *

**SansFollicle**: You want me to what?  
**UndeniablySarcastic0916**: Sing for me, baldy.  
**SansFollicle**: I don't sing.  
**UndeniablySarcastic0916**: You jest. Everyone secretly sings.  
**SansFollicle**: What if I just look up song lyrics and just copy-paste them?  
**UndeniablySarcastic0916**: I can see you right now.  
**SansFollicle**: WHAT?  
**SansFollicle**: WTF!  
**UndeniablySarcastic0916**: I work in the spyware company Shinra buys things off of.  
**SansFollicle** OO!  
**UndeniablySarcastic0916**: So, right now, you're supposed to be taking care of a little business with a banker, but what are you doing? Chatting with someone you don't know?  
**UndeniablySarcastic0916**: You're a bad little bald boy. I should spank you.  
**SansFollicle**: You're creepy.  
**UndeniablySarcastic0916**: Your mother is creepy.  
**UndeniablySarcastic0916**: And your father.  
**UndeniablySarcastic0916**: And your sister-in-law.  
**UndeniablySarcastic0916**: And your face.

* * *

Reality came crashing back to Tifa at the wrong time. At a very, very, very wrong time. She had riding him like a bull, and her eyes popped open in shock and realization. "RENO!" She screamed and slapped him sharply across the face. "What the hell?"

He seemed to realize what was happening too, and she got off of him, and both scrambled for their clothes. Well, Tifa did. Reno was just sitting against the wall, digging for a cigarette in his pants that was thrown aside.

Tifa screamed in frustration, and plus her headache was slamming into her cranium at 400 miles and hour, and covered herself as best as she could and ran into her bathroom.

Reno couldn't help but stare at her bubble butt.


	13. Hood Rollin'

**Author's Note**: I'm so damned horny. I don't know what else to say.

* * *

Reno put his forehead to the wooden door of her bathroom and pounded on the door with his right fist. Tifa's forgotten panties were curled up in his other hand, the frog design wrinkling. He could hear sobs of anguish and female hormones, and he could smell the distinct scent of her patchouli candles.

"Tifa! Open the damned door!" He cried, trying the doorknob roughly, almost wrenching it off in the process. It was locked, as expected.

The muttered curse words stopped for a moment, and he heard footsteps coming towards him. Placing his ear slowly on the surface of the door, and listened. He didn't quite expect what would happen next.

She kicked the door down.

Wood chips, splinters, and chunks went flying in the air, most of it landing in and on Reno. A barrage of slivers pierced his ear, and he was thrown back to the wall opposite the door-less doorframe. When Reno opened his eyes that were previously squeezed shut, he could see her outline, her face darkened by the light, and her arms at her waist.

Tifa did not give off the Zen-like mood. It was more like a Mike Tyson mood, complete with ear-biting.

* * *

"Dude, never mess with chicks with dicks."  
"She doesn't have a dick, you moron."  
"You said she did this to you? She's gotta be on the manly side."  
"Are you calling her manly?"  
"Naah, man, just wondering if she works out or not."  
"She does."  
"Hey man, can you spare some money?"  
"I don't have cash on me. Want a smoke instead?"  
"Sure man. Hey, you can't smoke on the train."  
"Does it look like I give a damn?"  
"Right."

* * *

Tseng drove his sleek black car (that was bird shit-free) to a deserted country road, miles away from people. Windshield wipers went back and forth, clearing away the raindrops that were falling quite heavily as the night wore on.

"Where are you going?" Elena asked, adjusting the radio.

He grabbed her wrist and set it back on her lap, not taking his eyes off the road and other hand off the wheel. "Don't."

They rode in silence, until he stopped at random. He unlocked the doors, and got out, beckoning Elena to do the same.

Two doors were slammed shut simultaneously, and Tseng used his Turk-style charm to roll over the hood of the car and land in front of Elena. The headlights were still on, and they shone brightly as his weight bumped the car.

"What the-

Tseng and Elena were soaking wet from the downpour, and she was beginning to get a little uncomfortable. He shoved her against the passenger door, and kissed-no, devoured- her mouth completely, showing feeling through actions.

* * *

Taking time out of her normal Wednesday night LOST time, she sacrificed seeing Jack and Sawyer to clean up the mess she made with the door. Painstakingly, she also pulled out several splinters from her foot, each feeling like a pinprick; the pain magnified by hydrochloric acid. 


	14. Dictionary Death

**Disclaimer: **Ooh, I need to find something to do.

* * *

Tifa had been avoiding Reno for weeks. That was her first time getting high, and she vowed not to go near anyone who has problems with substance abuse. Reno got her high! She hated him more than Chuck Norris hated the color pink. She wanted to roundhouse kick him in the testicles and then rip them out with a rust safety pin coated in ammonia and bleach.

Sitting at her desk trying to remove her membership at the dating site at 2 in the morning with no lights on made her eyes burn and she turned on her desk lamp to ease the pain of frying pupils. As she did that, she saw her calendar on the wall, and looked at the week she highlighted in red for her menstrual cycle.

Oh god, she was late.

* * *

Using two fingers, he pushed the blue beaded curtain to the side and entered Madame Circe's Fortune Reading Hut. The walls were a dark purple and decorated with odd hieroglyphs, the air was hazy, fat black candles were burning in their holders on tables, and Madame Circe herself, a woman in her thirties with an eyepatch and a bandanna on her head, was seated at a table.

"Come, child. Reno, is it not?" She said with a heavy accent. Was she really psychic, or did she read newspapers? Hmm…

Reno sat opposite her at the old circular wooden table, looking at her crystal ball. "So, you can tell me my future?"

She nodded slowly, and smiled, gold teeth showing. "Aye, child." She picked up a deck of tarot cards and began shuffling. After about three long minutes of shuffling, Circe lay down one card. "The Drunkard."

"…"

"The Scholar."

"…"

"Knowledge. Power. Rivalry."

"… and what does this all mean?" He asked, clearly confused and lost.

Circe smiled and put away the cards. "The crystal ball will show me." The crystal ball looked like nothing more than a glass orb with smoke inside of it. Psh. Cheap things you get at carnivals.

Madame Circe looked long and hard at the crystal ball, put both her hands on it, and began to sway back and forth, chanting in an odd mystical language. "Loquor mee menti, factus de materia, cinis elementi… similis sum folio, de quo ludunt venti…"

Reno thought she was either possessed, reaching the other realm, or clinically insane.

"My child, while visiting your favorite bookstore, you are drunk, and you are caught in the middle of a violent melee between rival book clubs reading the same book. Unable to escape the madness, you are beaten to death with an unabridged dictionary." She finished, wiping away an imaginary tear.

* * *

"Well, I guess you don't have ED anymore."  
"Mmhm."  
"Can we do that again?"  
"You do know I can't go twice in one day."  
"There's always the blue pill."  
"I need to take a physical tomorrow."  
"Viagra shows up in your bloodstream?"  
"…why wouldn't it?"  
"Come on, what would Rufus do when he finds out you're on Viagra?"  
"…"  
"It's not like you guys are having sex."  
"…"  
"Right? Right?"  
"Elena, there's something I need to tell you."  
"…Tseng, please don't tell me you're gay."  
"I'm-  
"OH GOD, JUST STOP. STOP RIIIGHT THERE. AAGH… I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'RE GAY AND CHEATING ON ME! HOW COULD YOU? HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO M-"  
"Rufus was born without a penis."  
"-E AND DID YOU EVER STOP TO THINK HOW I WOULD FEEL-what?" 


	15. Schizos in Day Spas

**Author's Note:** Jesus, after moving into a studio smaller than an average high school classroom, my mother had decided to cut the TV cable, and get rid of my DSL. I only get good reception when it's rainy outside and/or if someone stands really close to the TV. (But that blocks my view. I'm an American. I have the right to sit on a couch from a distance and gorge on vegan junk food.) AND I DON'T HAVE INTERNET. So don't be expecting an update anytime soon after this.

**Disclaimer: **FF and all related things belongs to Tetsuya Nomura. Tifa's beaded earrings that were in the box are the ones I saw while waiting on line to pay for clothes at EXPRESS. ABBA owns "Dancing Queen". The car in which Tseng and Elena had sex on is a Cadillac. A black one.

* * *

Upon looking for her old shoes that she liked to wear when she went on scenic walks, she found a dusty cardboard box that looked familiar to her. Tifa blew away all the dust and pulled it out of under the bed, and sneezed. When she opened the box, she pulled out a roll of colorful sticker pictures of her and Cloud when they were still together.

His hair was as spiky as ever. He was smiling goofily too, something that he rarely did. She remembered that they went out for ice cream afterwards. He had pistachio, and she had mint chocolate chip. What were they so happy about? Oh yes, they went to an amusement park, and they had rode the monster coaster six times without feeling the usual pang of nausea that most riders feel.

There was more in the box; an old ticket stub to a melodramatic opera, an old tube of lip balm, a pair of dangly earrings made of beads and a picture of AVALANCHE-when they were all still together.

But where was Cloud now? Tifa knew the answer but tried so hard over the years to forget.

About two years after the "Kadaj" incident, Cloud began to slowly go insane. He'd hallucinate, throw fits, and suffer from insomnia. It was Tifa herself who checked him into the asylum.

Today, she decided to visit him, just to give him the things in the box and to see how he was doing.

_Concern_.

* * *

Stomach round and fat, heaving up and down, up and down. He knew. They sat in silence as the yellow-haired one looked at the white stucco walls, eyes all distant. Her lips were twisted, like they had an insect in between she wanted to mash up and pulverize.

She pulled out the box from the white paper bag she had by her chair. The loud crinkling noise snapped him out of his trance-like state, and his eyes, the eyes that used to radiate with beauty and glamour were dull now, and they shot towards the noise. His bare toes curled up on the hardwood floor as he remembered faintly.

"Cloud, you remember this?" She held out the roll of sticker pictures, each decorated with colorful stars and big, fat hearts.

He eyed it like it was a Petri dish full of Dengue Fever-infected mosquitoes that she was going to unleash onto him. He brought his knees up to his chest and began to shift away from her hand on his bed. The solace of his bed relaxed him, so he slowly reached out to take the sticker pictures.

When the 9-inch plastic roll of sticker pictures was in his hand, he looked at it as if he was trying to remember. She took out all the other things in the cardboard box and placed them on the side of his bed. Tifa pulled he chair closer to the side of his bed after seeing that he was comfortable enough with her.

"Do you remember Marlene?" Tifa asked and held up the picture of the AVALANCHE members, plus Marlene and Denzel. "That's her, right there."

Cloud nodded; he understood. "Vincent." He said concisely.

Tifa gave him a small smile. "Mmm. Vincent always wore that old red cloak, didn't he?" She reminisced sadly.

With three fingers, he touched her growing stomach gently, just with his fingertips.

_Sensitivity_.

* * *

The cedar walls were unpainted, unvarnished. Steam rose from the center of the closet-like sauna, and the men in it were all in towels, each with dark, concentrated faces. The light was dim, and the air was thick and hazy, but it didn't distract all three of them from their mental ramblings.

"_She keeps asking me if we could do it in the car… that's a company car, damnit… I should go buy myself one just for sex. Yeah… it'd have shag music CDs in the stereo… vibrating seats… six different kinds of stimulating pills… hydraulics… yeah… it'd be called the 'shag pad'… but why does she bite me? She never bit me there before…"_

"_How old is Yuffie? I mean, she's a princess and all, and she uses stupid dating sites to meet people… Argh… if she's underage, I'll be dead… I didn't even know it was her online! Is cybersex with minors illegal? I know that sex itself with minors is illegal, but she told me she was over 18… damn it… damn it… I didn't even use a condom…"  
_

"_Shit… why does this have to happen to **me**? Why am **I** going to be a father? Why couldn't it be someone else that got her high and pregnant? Why do these things always have to happen to **me**? Oh, **woe is me**… **woe is me**…"_

"Rude… don't you ever take off your sunglasses?" Tseng asked, adjusting the white towel around his waist.

Rude shook his head and wiped away the steam on the sunglasses with his fingers, like little windshield wipers.

_Dissolvit ut glaciem.

* * *

_

"What are you thinking about?" Reno asked Tseng, a big mug of beer in the redhead's right hand. All three males sat at a bar downtown, far, far, far from where the women they were avoiding would ever think to find them- a drag bar in Junon. ABBA was playing, and a muscular, tanned Adonis-like creature in dressed in purple and green was singing "Dancing Queen".

Tseng swallowed the wasabi peas that were in his mouth. "Elena." Reno and Rude made sounds of agreement. Not about Elena, but knowing that their teammate and leader had women problems too. "You?" The bindi-d man asked Reno after taking a large swill of his Gin and Tonic.

"Tifa. Rude?"

Rude shifted in his seat, and nervously finished his cocktail, coincidentally named 'Sex on the Beach'. (Yuffie and Rude had sex on the beach earlier… then in a hotel… then in the bathroom… then in a boat… then in a restaurant kitchen closet…) "Yuffie." He said quietly.

Both of Rude's coworkers gave him odd looks. "Did you have sex with the Princess?" Tseng asked the bald man about the Wutaian princess.

Rude nodded.

"Man, you scored!" Reno smiled and made a motion to the bartender to get another round of drinks for the three. The bartender winked at Reno, and in turn, received a glare and the finger from the slightly homophobic Turk. When the drinks were served, Reno asked, "So, how'd it happen?"

The follicle-less man, being as tight-lipped as he normally was, summed it up in ten words. "Online. Dating. Cyber sex. Bar. Drunk sex. Is she legal?"

Tseng replied, "She's legal."

_Mollified_.


	16. Who Will Save Your Soul?

**Disclaimer: **X3 was ruined for me. RUINED, I TELL YOU, RUINED! (mumble) stupid (mumble) school people (mumble).

Still no internet, people. (sigh) How do I manage to live?  
I've decided I would do something very interesting with this fic. You're going to have to find out next chapter, because I had no fun writing this one. The chapter is quite depressing.  
Updating at work really sucks.

-Liz

---

Twisted.

That was how she felt inside. It was like something was gnawing at her, draining away her energy, wringing her from the inside out. She pictured a heavyset woman in an apron, fat forearms rippling and jiggling as she twisted all the water from Tifa into a big wooden wash bucket. Yes, that was what she was-a wet towel.

She stayed inside for days now, depression slamming into her like an oncoming train, like a horde of angry writers coming after the Authoress for using that cliché comparison. She'd be curled up on the couch, eyes crusted with sleep, squinting to keep out the slices of sunshine that defied the Venetian blinds. Her light green down comforter with the fancy design all over it was now ruined and soiled from old tears, and liquid that flowed from the nose that Tifa didn't care to wipe away with tissues that stood unused in that blue flowery box on the new coffee table she bought with Reno after she hit him in the back with her old one.

She was miserable. Miserable and pregnant.

She'd feel it move around in her womb, and it felt like a monster. A monster with claws and teeth that threatened to rip itself out in a few months.

--

Reno, after revealing his problems to his fellow male coworkers with female problems, decided it was best to carry the responsibility of becoming the father figure of his child. Tseng and Rude gave him manly support, also known as drunk hugs in the drag bar with the Adonis-like singer crooning "Bohemian Rhapsody".

--

Killing time was flushing minutes from her life. She looked up from the toilet, the acidic taste in her mouth making her retch again. After a few minutes of emptying her stomach, she flushed the toilet and rinsed her mouth at the sink. In the corner of her eye she saw her new door.

The door.

Screaming in anguish like an Amazon's war cry, she punched a hole through it with her wet fist.

--

"This is embarrassing." Pastel colors of the store sharply contrasted with their dark blue suits. A row of clown dolls grinned menacingly at the trio, and all three of them walked quickly past, trying not to remember the "Mad Clown on Crack Who Liked Magic Tricks" incident about a year and a half ago. Reno pushed the shopping cart through the aisle of the Babies-R-Us in Junon.

Tseng pulled the cart gently to stop Reno, and perused the diapers stacked up in mountains. A pregnant couple stopped to look at the three, gave them odd looks, and went back to shopping. The man from Wutai pulled out a brand which the words were written in Wutaian. "I used these." He said, and threw six or seven packages into the shopping cart. Reno sighed and pushed the cart out of the aisle.

Rude, fascinated with toys, was batting at one of those figures that no matter how hard you hit them, they don't fall over. His eyes were slightly glazed, and saliva was threatening to slip out of the corner of his mouth. Tseng and Reno watched him for a second, and then ignored him to continue with shopping.

"Do you think she'll ever talk to me?"

Tseng's expression turned into an indifferent one. "Maybe. Her hormones are out of control right now and she might forgive you for a while."

"For a while." Reno repeated, trying hard not to imagine when that time came.

---

Yet again, Tifa had to call **ACME DOOR AND WINDOW SERVICES** from the yellow pages. Two dark-skinned men wearing dirty boots caked with mud or probably chocobo shit stomped in with a new door, this time made of steel. Their shoes left dirty tracks all over her floor. Death to carpet.

Her bandaged knuckles gave her the "fighter" look that she used to have.

But have you ever heard of a pregnant fighter? I didn't think so.

She laid her large self down on her bed with the silk sheets, her round stomach perpendicular to the bed. Her hands pillowed her head, and she began to count the dots on the ceiling. The corners of the white ceiling began to sway, at first waving around like a child's balloon on a windy day. But now, her vision was blurry as the young woman struggled to keep her eyes open.

Tifa hadn't eaten a decent meal for a week. She had some water, raisins, and the occasional pizza here and there, but overall, her body was suffering. So was the fetus.

_My Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want… he lays me down on green pastures..._

---

"Mornin', Mister Strife. Time for your meds." The busty young nurse cheerfully greeted, pushing a metal cart fill of syringes, bottles, a meal, and various other instruments that patients were not allowed to have. The wheels made no noise as she let herself into Cloud's room.

Cloud himself was sitting on an armchair reading a book of poetry. He looked up at Laura, and then back to the book. She stood waiting for him to get up, and tapped her foot once, twice, three times.

She cleared her throat to get his attention. "Aren't you going to take your medicine?" She asked, impatiently curling her finger around her sepia locks.

Not taking his eyes off the book, he replied softly, "She's pregnant."

"Sorry, didn't hear you." Laura snapped her gum rudely.

Cloud shook his head slowly and put the book back onto the small table, and pulled up the light green sleeve on his right arm as he walked towards the bed. He sat down on the edge of it, and she quickly took an alcohol pad and wiped a small area. As usual, she quickly injected him with his daily medications, and the twitch Cloud used to get when she first started to do that wasn't there for the first time. His mind was too preoccupied with something else.

Laura bathed Cloud, washing his hair in the sink in one corner of the small room. She put his clothes on, shaved him, and gave him a plastic tray with his lunch on it. The lunch was simple: a ham sandwich with mustard, orange juice, and a few potato chips.

When Laura left, he stared at the slices of pig meat between the rye and smear of mustard.

_Turn into a volleyball…_

_­_---

Bags in his hand, he knocked furiously on Tifa's door with his free hand. "Tifa! I know you're mad at me, but I just wanna talk!" He shouted, and kicked the door to make more noise. When he kicked the door, it opened just a crack, and he let himself in.

The place was a total disaster; mud on the floor, clothes lying around, and pizza boxes strewn on the ground, opened and showing the uneaten portions. He ran to her room, going up her steps two at a time.

Reno flung the door open and saw a very pregnant Tifa on the floor.

He dropped his bags and ran to her, and tried to shake her awake. "Tifa," Reno said as he tried to wake her up, "C'mon, get up."

She mumbled something about flying octopi and Xianghua and Kilik's favorite sex position, and Reno decided to take her to the hospital. As he tried to lift her, Tifa's arm subliminally flew out and smacked Reno in a very sensitive part below the navel.

It took him three minutes to recover.

So with a pregnant lady in his arms and now into the backseat of a car, he furiously drove to the ER, the siren reserved for the Turks to legally drive through traffic and red lights wailing.

_Watching, waiting…_

---


	17. Fantasies of the Perfect Woman

**YOU HAVE 2 NEW E-MAILS!**

His eyelids flickered as he guided his cursor over to the button on the screen. One turned up to be a Pornado. Nude images of men on women, women on men, men on men, women on women, and men on sheep barraged his computer monitor. Lazily, he deleted that one, and exited the numerous pop-ups. He bit on the cigarette filter gently, just enough to take a drag. Eh, stupid filtered cigarettes. Filtered were for pussies.

The second e-mail was from that ridiculous dating site.

**MEET NEW MEMBERS!**

**Anachronistic Darling**

**Age**: 29

**Gender**: Female

**Field of Business**: Real Estate

**Yearly Income: **26K+

**Interests**: Victorian dress, Emily Dickinson, making cherry tarts, Alice in Wonderland, lace, and poetry slams.

**Dislikes**: Body odor, fish, flowers, and the rain.

**SusieSunshine**

**Age**: 28

**Gender**: Female

**Field of Business**: Botany

**Yearly Income**: 14K

**Interests**: Peace, flowers, long hair, marijuana, holding hands, tye-dye, Mother Nature, AVALANCHE, and sunshine.

**Dislikes**: Violence, guns, soldiers, government, Rufus Shinra, Turks, SOLDIERS, Sephiroth, and Shinra Inc. itself.

**PN03**

**Age**: 22

**Gender**: Female

**Field** **of** **Business**: Game Development

**Yearly Income**: 20K

**Interests**: PS2, Xbox, old school Game Boys, first-person shooters, DDR, simulated driving games, fighting games, and Pokémon Red.

**Dislikes**: Bootlegs, bootleggers, 8-bit graphics, and sticky buttons on controllers.

**WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEND A MESSAGE?**

Dear **SusieSunshine**,

I'd like you to know that pacifists like you do not live long in this tyrannical world we live in. You get obliterated. You get mutilated. You get pulverized. You wilt. Yes, you wilt like plants after we spray DDT on them. You mutate like the animals that eat the plants with the DDT on it.

Dear **Anachronistic Darling,**

There is no place in this world like you. Please go and drown yourself in a pool of ammonia.

Dear **PN03**,

You should make a game based on sex.

**SENT**

He leant back on his swiveling chair, weathered hands behind his head, and an indifferent look on his face. His eyes were half-closed, and the cigarette (AKA "cylinders of death") burned down to the filter stump. With two fingers, he put that in the glass ashtray that looked like you were putting your cigarettes between two breasts.

Two glass breasts that you couldn't fondle like a real woman's.

Jesus, he was desperate. Desperate and horny. When was the last time he made love to a beautiful woman? When was the last time he had someone to love? When was the last time he'd cradle her in his arms, sharing a glass of red wine, and she'd pluck grapes off the stem and feed him? When was the last time he was woken in the middle of the night so that she would have comfort after a nightmare?

He got up and dragged himself to his bed, which was naturally unmade and messy. Burying his face into his stained pillow, he envisioned himself with the perfect woman.

She would have dark hair and bright eyes. Dark hair always brought out the brightness in eyes, he thought. She'd have a fair complexion, and a round and happy face. Her name would be something elegant. She'd be curvy in some places, and trim as a dancer in others. Her hands and feet would be super-soft, and she would give him a nice massage when he was tired.

She'd be the last one to see when he went to sleep and the first one to see when he woke up. She'd make him a hearty breakfast and kiss him goodbye if he had any work to do that day. She would be waiting for him at the docks, wearing a pretty dress and a wide-brimmed straw hat, just to bring him homemade lunch. And when he came home, all tired and worn out, she would have dinner ready, but they would first share a beer watching some show on the telly. He'd tell what happened that day that was interesting, and she'd listen and make intelligent comments, and she'd then tell him anything interesting.

Then they would have dinner in his small apartment, eating on the small wooden table with deep, jagged scratches running through it that he found in a junkyard. She'd pile the table with delicious food so that you wouldn't see the faded blue paint on the table. Then she would do the dishes, and he would go take a shower.

When he came out of the shower, she would be in the bedroom in her pretty red robe reading some classic novel, her hair tied up, and glasses on her face. He would walk in with nothing but boxers on, and she'd hand him a fine cigar and a lighter. He would smoke it, and she wouldn't care about the smoke because she loved him anyways. When he was done, he threw the stub out the window like always, and crawled into bed. She'd fold the page she was on, take off her glasses, untie her long dark hair, and get up from the armchair to join him in the cotton and down sanctuary guarded by none other than a man of sinewy muscle and flesh.

They might make love; steamy, sweaty sex. Or maybe they would just cuddle under the sheets, mumbling and whispering sweet nothings as a wave of sleep passed over them. Or maybe they would stay up all night, talking about the most random things, like how to pronounce certain words with more than ten letters in them, or if they should have children and name them after the season they were born on.

Everyday would be different; everyday would be something he looked forward to. Oh, how Cid dreamed of this perfect woman, oh, how he wished, wished, wished she was real and able to love him.

Realizing that it was all just an illusion he had created in his mind, a solitary tear squeezed out of his eye and fell onto the dirty pillow as the pilot closed his eyes sadly.


	18. Deserved

**Author's Note: **I'm a bit.. frazzled.

People often wish for things that are entirely unnecessary, even as they grow up. Little girls ask for ponies. Those little girls grow up to ask for lipstick and boyfriends. Little boys ask for action figures. They grow up and they ask for money and girls who look like the latest Sports Illustrated centerfold model.

Reno sat on a hard plastic chair in the waiting room, elbows on his knees and his chin propped up on his hands. His hair was disheveled, and it clung to his forehead as he perspired. The hospital had the air conditioner on, but Reno thought he was in the middle of a Dutch oven.

Seconds felt like hours as he tried to keep his mind off of Tifa. He read some women's magazines and learned how to deal with children with Chocobopox, but reading that only made him feel incredibly responsible for what he put in her uterus.

Responsibility… something that Reno tried to avoid, even though he held a high position as a Turk. What was that phrase, 'With power comes responsibility…'? Yeah, that was total bullshit. Reno threw himself back in the rather boulder-like seat and began to cry softly.

One-up on the manliness, Reno.

**Aviationfordummies**: Ever been cheated on?

**PN03**: Not yet. You?

**Aviationfordummies**: Well, I've been dumped so many times by the same girl that it feels like she's cheating on me when I see her with her new boyfriend.

**PN03**: So you're the stalker type.

**Aviationfordummies**: I guess so then. But I feel like a slug that had salt injected into its body by a hypodermic.

**PN03**: Ouch.

**PN03**: Well, I gotta go. My boss is inspecting all the cubicles.

**PN03**: And just so u know, I hope you the best in finding a girlfriend.

**PN03 has signed off at 2:34:37**

**Aviationfordummies**: Don't go…

**The previous message could not be sent.**

"This may come as a shock to you, but," the doctor with the black mustache paused to sigh and twiddle with the pen he had between his fingers. "There was a miscarriage. Tifa wasn't eating right things, and it's a miracle you found her at this time."

Reno sat dumbly in the hard plastic chair. Wait, what just happened?

"Tifa's just getting out of surgery, so if you want to see her, she's in room 226."

Reno continued to stare at the linoleum, eyes blurred by tears. This didn't seem real, and expected the doctor to come back and yell, "Just kidding!" and then everything would be all right.


	19. Failure to Brood

The hospital's fluorescent lights began to burn his pupils; their harsh white glow leaving dots that blurred his vision. He suddenly felt a rush of nausea, and stumbled into the nearest men's room and retched into the porcelain bowl. Everything seemed surreal. Beads of cold sweat popped from his skin, and as he clung onto the toilet seat as if his life depended on it, Reno shuddered. The world was a cruel place.

His child, someone he had created had perished half an hour ago. Someone who belonged in this world, who needed someone to hold and love, was wrenched away from life's curious mysteries.

Reno picked himself up from the floor. For a hospital, the bathroom was filthy. His knees were wet with a homogeneous mixture of toilet water and bodily fluids, his hands that clutched the seat were somewhat sticky, and the stench of human waste lingered in the air. Ripping off a piece of toilet paper, Reno wiped his mouth and flushed the toilet, exiting and heading towards the sink to wash his hands.

He felt as if he knew he was pretending that everything would be all right. That made him feel worthless? Undeserving? Reno was at a loss of words.

Brooding outside didn't work. He sat in front of the hospital's main entrance, the one with all the flowers and perfectly cut grass. Children with balloons skipped by with their mothers, not knowing that on the other side of the building, people died, came into the ER with their chests ripped open in horrific accidents, attacks, rapes… Oh how the cruel things in the world were hidden from such innocent eyes.

Goddamnit, there were no more cigarettes left. He tossed the empty box into a nearby trashcan and slumped down on a hard bench.

Man up, Reno. Man up, he thought.

_**Red-Hot:** I got my ass handed to me by a girl Saturday night.  
**ShakenNotStirred: **Oh, really? I bet she was really ugly and buff.  
**Red-Hot: **Naah, she's really hot. And top-heavy. Damn, she's really hot, when I think about it.  
**Red-Hot: **No offense to you and all but you didn't put up a picture so I don't know what to say.  
**ShakenNotStirred: **You'll see me soon enough, Reno.  
**ShakenNotStirred has signed off.**_

_**Red-Hot**: Are you stalking me? ARE YOU? HUH?  
**ShakenNotStirred**: If I was stalking you, would I need some cheesy instant messaging program to contact you?  
**Red-Hot**: …right._

_**ShakenNotStirred**: JESUS CHRIST RENO, I DO NOT HAVE A CRUSH ON YOU!  
**Red-Hot**: Then tying me up in the storage room with telephone cords isn't an act of love?_

"_You want to love me… you want to huuug me, you want to smooch me…" he swirled some spaghetti noodles around his fork and waved the fork around, very much like a conductor does so with his baton, and droplets of tomato sauce landed on the table. Tifa didn't seem to mind._

_The taunting seemed to get to her, and she held her fork savagely in her fist and stabbed her pile of noodles, a squirt of red sauce landing near Reno's plate. Tifa snatched a napkin from a pile on the side of the table and wiped it up as if she had some sort of obsessive-compulsive disorder. _

_As she balled it into a fist, she looked at him, her round eyes meeting his playful ones tinted with mako. "I'm just a very considerate person, and I haven't had anyone over for quite a long time. It gets lonely, you know?" _

_Oh, how some inappropriate thoughts flooded his mind. "Doesn't your skin scream my name? Doesn't it long for my attenti-", he began, but something white- the napkin- was thrown at his face. "-on? Don't you just want to get me all riled up, wet, and oiled down—"_

"_This is how you roll a blunt." He licked his finger to seal the end of a neatly made, perfectly divided joint. _

So that was what love and loss felt like.


	20. Lies

**Author's** **Note**: Enjoy.  
**Disclaimer**: Tetsuya Nomura owns everything… except for the screen names.

Depression came in short flashes for our favorite Turk, and perhaps he slipped through sanity once in a while, but Reno never felt like this before. It was like the first time he tried ecstasy, the touchy-good feeling giving you that buzz that makes you forget about the end, when you wake up shitfaced next to some ugly whale that you might've shagged.

He felt like he was morbidly obese.

Reno didn't really know what to feel. Stunned? Shocked? Epileptic seizure-y? What was he really supposed to do? Tifa wasn't his girlfriend, fiancé, wife, lover, or mistress. She wasn't even supposed to be his friend.

But they fucked.

And they fucked hard.

He picked himself up and walked numbly to a snack machine.

* * *

In reality, the baby that Reno sired was alive, but was born premature and with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. Reno had a son. Tifa never wanted him to know, since she was still so confused. Reno would get over it, and go back to being a Turk right?

Tifa was perfectly fine, and sat in her hospital bed, her head turned to look out the window to see the sun shining, birds chirping, and cumulonimbus clouds in the sky.

A cloud. Cloud.

She missed him terribly at this point, even if it was like talking to a wall sometimes when she was with him. She grew up with the guy, and now he's in the mental ward.. Life sucks—and blows.

Tifa often wondered if she should go visit him. He was downstairs, in the hushed department where you have to wear soft-soled shoes. She sighed.

* * *

**FilthyGorgeous**: Hey baby  
**SansFollicle**: morning  
**SansFollicle**: where were you last night?  
**SansFollicle**: i had to wait for an hour.  
**SansFollicle**: thnx for ditching me.  
**SansFollicle**: god. b like that then.  
**FilthyGorgeous**: Why you have to be a girly man? I don't care about your feelings.  
**SansFollicle**: Doesn't our love mean anything?  
**FilthyGorgeous**: I'm not interested in your feelings. Our "relationship" is actually like a physical one  
**FilthyGorgeous**: and plus you're not boyfriend material.  
**SansFollicle**: WHAT ARE YOU TALKIN ABOUT  
**FilthyGorgeous**: Lucky for you Vincent doesn't have the internet.  
**SansFollicle**: I KNEW IT! I KNEW YOU LIKED THAT WEIRDO!  
**FilthyGorgeous**: At least he's more of a man you'll ever be.  
**SansFollicle**: IMMA GONNA BUST A CAP IN YOUR ASS NOW WHY YUFF WHY???!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!!?!??!?!?!??!?!?!? IM SO MUCH COOLER THAN THAT FREAK!  
**FilthyGorgeous**: he doesn't shave his pubic hair into porn star triangles.  
**SansFollicle**: this is the worst way to break up with me gosh.

**SansFollicle**: Yuffie dumped me.  
**Naproxenne**: whaddya want, a cookie?

**SansFollicle**: YUFFIE DUMPED ME  
**Ibuprofenne**: I always thought she was a gold digger.  
**SansFollicle**::is really emo::  
**Ibuprofenne**: I'm going to go dancing  
**Ibuprofenne**: wanna come?  
**Ibuprofenne**: scissor sisters are performing.  
**Ibuprofenne**: don't you wanna take your mama out?  
**Ibuprofenne**:D  
**SansFollicle**: life is so pointless.

**SansFollicle**: yuffie dumped me.  
**Taciturk**: hey man  
**Taciturk**: if you ever need a shoulder to cry on  
**Taciturk**: or in need of some ass  
**Taciturk**: call me but right now i'm kinda busy  
**Taciturk**: my moms on the phone.

**SansFollicle**: YUFFIE DUMPED ME!!!!!!!  
**313N4**: if 4 outta 5 ppl suffer from diarrhea  
**313N4**: does the last one enjoy it?  
**313N4**: if you spin an oriental person around  
**313N4**: is he disoriented?  
**SansFollicle**::EMO::

**SansFollicle**: Yuffie dumped me.  
**Ritalinne**: Yuffie dumped me too.  
**SansFollicle**: When was that?  
**Ritalinne**: A minute ago.  
**SansFollicle**: slut.  
**Ritalinne**: I knowwwww…  
**SansFollicle**: I was talkin about you.


	21. Junkie Monkey Drunkie

**Author's Note: **God, I need REVIEWS! JUST DON'T READ-N-RUN! I NEED SOME INSPIRATION TO WRITE MORE! Thanks.

**Weeks Later**

The Hybrid Tea Rose. Kingdom Plantae, Divison Magnoliophyta, Class Magnoliopsida… Crimson petals as soft as virgin snow. No, let's try that again.

The Hybrid Tea Rose. Kingdom Plantae, Divison Magnoliophyta, Class Magnoliopsida… Crimson petals as soft as a baby's bottom. He ran his fingertip across the underside of the exterior petals, and then began to pluck them in a frenzied state.

"She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me, she loves me not." He said quite furiously as he tore petal after petal from the pitiful flower. If the plant had a voice, it would be screaming in pain.

When he got to the point where there were no more petals, he hurled the wretched flower to the ground and sighed, feeling quite stupid. No, he didn't love her. Love was for dunderheads who cared about emotion. Yeah. He was a man. A manly man who burped and cursed and farted and drank lots of dark beer.

But what was the use of burping and cursing and farting and drinking an excess of dark beer? To prove to everyone that he was a true rugged man, and to prove to _her_ that he didn't care? Was it really worth it?

Rude scratched his bald head with his square-cut nails. Why was he in such a rut?

"Reno. Give me another one."

His red-haired comrade took another doomed rose from the wicker basket and gave it to Rude, who immediately began to shred the poor thing into ribbons.

* * *

"Hello, and welcome to Quiz Junkie!" the yellow-jacketed game show host said into the microphone, staring straight into the camera, his hair slicked back and his little mustache perfectly trimmed.

The audience cheered enthusiastically, and the camera moved to the contestants.

Rude choked on his Butter-Lite popcorn, and Reno accidentally snorted up a large amount of orange soda into his nose, which then caused him to cough and snort violently. Rude thumped his fist on Reno's back and they both turned back to the television screen in Reno's _Bachelor Pad_ apartment.

"Today, we have our celebrity contestants, all from the environmental terrorist group AVALANCHE! Please welcome Vincent Valentine, Tifa Lockheart, and Princess Yuffie Kisaragi!"

The host, Henry Darius, walked to Vincent's podium. "So Vincent, how's it like being an eco-terrorist?"

Vincent fixed Henry a steely glare and replied, "Fine, thank you."

"Don'tcha wish Captain Planet was there to help you guys?" Henry joked, laughing along.

The audience groaned and Henry moved onto Tifa. He stood beside her podium and was visibly trying hard not to look at her chest. He cleared his throat and shuffled his cue cards.

"So you're a bartender now?"

She put on a plastic smile. "Yeah."

Henry chuckled. "Try whipping up some Sex on the Beach with this kung-fu goddess." He said as he walked to Yuffie's podium. The crowd groaned again.

"So, it's _Princess_ Yuffie, right?"

"Yeah! It's not really like those fairy-tale princesses y'know, more like those boring stay-at-home royals who do nothing but—"

"Okay, contestants, you know how to play. Get a question right in and win fabulously random prizes! Get a question wrong and you must do a copious amount of the Drug of the Day, which is…" Henry turned to the crowd.

"MARIJUANA!"

Tifa sighed and buried her face in her hands. No way was she getting high and sexually aroused on national television. Oh, Henry Darius was at risk…

Miles away, Reno watched the live feed with curiosity.

"Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobes are afraid of what?"

Vincent and Tifa both buzzed, but Vincent was given the chance to answer.

"The fear of the number 666," He replied sullenly, clearly not entertained by the show's tempting prizes and the rush of adrenaline while making a fool out of yourself on live TV.

"Thaaaaat's right!" Henry shouted, and a curtain went up behind him. "You've won a key lime pie! Okay, onto the next question for Tifa! What is," he paused dramatically, and looked down at his cards, "the 1337 expression for pornography?"

Oh shit, Tifa thought, she didn't waste hours of her life playing World of Warcraft like other people did. "Porno?" She guessed, shrugging as a defense mechanism.

"Thaaaaat's incorrect!" Henry shouted. Tifa didn't like defeat being rubbed in her face like that, and she hung her head in anger.

A busty blonde walked up to Tifa's podium and placed the glass bong on her stand's flat surface.

Tifa sucked in a lot of breath and picked up the bong. Miles and miles away, Reno nearly wet himself in anticipation.


	22. Selfish Impulse

**A/N:** What's up with me? I've had ridiculous papers on the effects of the Cold War, and my only primary source was my paranoid Republican neighbor. Go figure.

* * *

Something about cannabis that drove her senses wild. She placed her lips over the mouthpiece of the beautifully decorated glass bong, and for that split second before she sucked in the smoke into her lungs, something in the back of her mind told her that Reno was watching this.

Of course he was. Dude was born to watch reality television.

She pulled away and looked at the host. "Couldn't I do something else? Juggle cups? Do handstands? Freestyle rap about my straight black pubic hair?"

The audience laughed in unison. "Ah, ah, ah, Tifa. Today's Drug of the Day is Mari-"

"Pot, I know." She grumbled, and sighed, head bent and eyes misting over. Pot.

When was the first time she tried pot? With Reno. And that got her pregnant. Wait, should she be blazing up? She had a two-month old at home. Can you say diminished responsibility? What if, in about twenty years, he searched his mother's name on an internet search engine and found this video, clips of her back when Eco-Terrorism was the vogue, or even those pictures Cid took when she got drunk?

"Tifa!" Yuffie hissed from beside her, "Just hurry up so I can win a key lime pie!"

Gulping down all her worries, she roughly grabbed the bong and looked at the camera defiantly, knowing that Reno was watching, and to give him the message that she was a strong, independent woman who didn't give a fuck about the past.

Ramen, burnt cat hair, and piss. That's what the first few hits felt like as it burned a path down to her lungs. She coughed up a mouthful of smoke.

The studio audience was pleased. They cheered her on, as if she was some damned circus animal chugging cheap beer like a freshman frat boy. Henry was no different. She saw him, through her blurred vision after her fourth (or was it her fifth) hit, leering at her and smirking. Music was being played, its tempo frantic, causing mass hysteria in the back of Tifa's mind. Hearing color and seeing sound wasn't quite right, was it?

"Such garbage on TV." The bald man commented, twirling the petal-less rose's stem between his fingers, other arm around the couch's armrest.

Reno chuckled. "You haven't seen her when she gets high, man. She goes flippin' insane." He hid the sad emotion quite well for a broken man.

"A good insane, I'm hoping, with hair-pulling, tantrums, and demon possession."

She turned around to see Yuffie with her hand over her nose and Vincent looking at her with a displeased look oh his face.

"Yuffie? What's wrong?" She tried to say, but it only came out as an incoherent babbling mess.

Yuffie's face began to melt upwards, her facial expression turning into one of a Cheshire Cat. Vincent's ragged red cape grew eyes and a mouth, and it seemed to be blowing kisses in her direction.

The frantic music didn't make it much better. Her senses were being assaulted by a rapid-fire from the hormone gun. Her face flushed pink, and her breathing became heavy and labored.

The music faded out and it was Yuffie's turn to answer a question. Henry strolled casually up to her podium, leaning slightly on it and grinning. "Princess Yuffie-"

Tifa just acted purely on a selfish desire to release her newfound energy. She grabbed the front lapels of Henry's ghastly jacket and planted a feverish kiss on his chin, since she pulled too hard and she missed.

The force of their contact bruised her thin lips, causing them to swell. Henry had a moment to recover before Tifa ravished his mouth with her hot tongue, his awkward positioning over her podium slightly hurting him.

Vincent shook his head and walked off the show. Yuffie followed in hopes of winning a delicious pie.

Reno, Rude, and thousands of other people around the globe stared at their television screens with their mouths open.


End file.
